News tagged with automation

QUT unmanned aircraft researchers have made what's believed to be a world-first breakthrough for small unmanned aircraft (UA) under 20 kilograms, developing an automated emergency landing system (AELS) that ...

A European supply ship will undock from the International Space Station on Saturday as scheduled but be destroyed 12 days earlier than planned because of a power hitch, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Friday.

ESA's last Automated Transfer Vehicle will leave the International Space Station on Saturday for its final solo voyage, setting course for a fiery demise that will mark the end of its mission and the programme.

Next Monday, ESA astronaut Samantha Christoforetti will float into Europe's space ferry to install a special infrared camera, set to capture unique interior views of the spacecraft's break-up on reentry.

Last Saturday, ESA's fifth and last Automated Transfer Vehicle, Georges Lemaître, undocked from the International Space Station at 13:40 GMT. Less than 30 hours later the spacecraft burnt up harmlessly in ...

Automation

Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.

Automation has had a notable impact in a wide range of industries beyond manufacturing (where it began). Once-ubiquitous telephone operators have been replaced largely by automated telephone switchboards and answering machines. Medical processes such as primary screening in electrocardiography or radiography and laboratory analysis of human genes, sera, cells, and tissues are carried out at much greater speed and accuracy by automated systems. Automated teller machines have reduced the need for bank visits to obtain cash and carry out transactions. In general, automation has been responsible for the shift in the world economy from industrial jobs to service jobs in the 20th and 21st centuries.